On this day, on the 9th of April 2019,, a scathing review of the planning of Rich’s “Losing Earth” was published. The review, which you can read here, included this priceless observation
“Other than Sununu’s vindictiveness and human shortsightedness, we have very little sense of the forces arrayed against Hansen and Pomerance. The inattention to the fossil-fuel industry is most glaring, but Rich also fails to address the consolidation of business interests more broadly against efforts to decarbonize. Nor do we get a glimpse of the movements that might have responded otherwise—say, those outside DC organizing against Reaganomics. So reading Losing Earth often feels like reading a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”
FWIW IMO. Nathaniel Rich has told an interesting human scale story of a few individuals in the second crucial decade, the 1980s. But the reviewer is largely correct in what they’ve said.
Why this matters.
Mustn’t get bogged down in the he said/she said, the minutiae. Gotta see the big picture, but it can be tricky, especially when you’ve dug up fascinating factoids.